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David Bowman (The Star-Child)
HAL 9000, the onboard artificial intelligence computer of Discovery One, is a sophisticated and supposedly infallible computer program designed to operate the ship and communicate with its occupants. Apart from his robotic personality, Hal is nearly indistinguishable from a human, at least conversationally. He can pass the Turing test with ease and seamlessly melds with his human crewmates, Frank and Dave. However, as the journey progresses, Hal’s passive, easygoing personality undergoes a shift. Forced to conceal the mission’s true objectives from his human crewmates, Hal begins to feel guilt, his integrity compromised by his deception. In time, this guilt results in computational error: Hal incorrectly predicts the failure of the AE-35 unit. Subsequently threatened with disconnection—to him, tantamount to death—Hal resorts to increasingly drastic measures, first killing Poole and eventually the rest of the crew to cover his tracks. Ultimately, Bowman is forced to disconnect him. This experience deeply troubles Bowman: though not flesh and blood, Hal not only thinks and speaks like a human, but he also feels and fears like one, too. More broadly, then, Hal’s character raises the question of what it really means to be human.
Hal Quotes in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The 2001: A Space Odyssey quotes below are all either spoken by Hal or refer to Hal . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 6 Quotes
The toolmakers had been remade by their tools.
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Chapter 16 Quotes
Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.
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Chapter 24 Quotes
Nowadays, one could always tell when Hal was about to make an unscheduled announcement. Routine, automatic reports, or replies to questions that had been put to him, had no preliminaries; but when he was initiating his own outputs there would be a brief electronic throat-clearing. It was an idiosyncrasy that he acquired during the last few weeks; later, it if became annoying, they might do something about it.
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Chapter 27 Quotes
Deliberate error was unthinkable. Even the concealment of truth filled him with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness—of what, in a human being, would have been called guilt. For like his makers, Hal had been created innocent; but, all too soon, a snake had entered his electronic Eden. For the last hundred million miles, he had been brooding over the secret he could not share with Poole and Bowman. He had been living a lie; and the time was fast approaching when his colleagues must learn that he had helped to deceive them.
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Chapter 31 Quotes
It if it could happen to a man, then it could happen to Hal; and with that knowledge the bitterness and the sense of betrayal he felt toward the computer began to fade.
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Hal Character Timeline in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The timeline below shows where the character Hal appears in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 16
...intelligence which serves as the “brain and nervous system” of Discovery. Capable of communicating orally, Hal easily passes the Turing test—a test designed to determine if a computer has human equivalent...
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Chapter 17
...obsessed with great expeditions of the past, like the Odyssey. Sometimes he plays games with Hal, who is programmed to win only half of the time. He ends his day with...
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Chapter 18
...no-man’s-land ahead is filled with millions of asteroids, however, and when Bowman reports for duty, Hal reminds him of their upcoming “approach” to asteroid 7794. The closest encounter asteroid on their...
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Chapter 19
...Earth, despite the rapid speed of radio communication. Though their trajectory is carefully calibrated by Hal, Bowman has trouble believing their ship is not being sucked into Jupiter’s immense gravitational pull....
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Discovery drops two atmospheric probes to Jupiter. Bowman and Poole observe Hal’s finely tuned course around the planet. The sun vanishes behind it, and Bowman and Poole...
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Chapter 21
...is unsettling, and Poole feels he has moved into a “new dimension of remoteness.” Suddenly, Hal reports a potential failure with Discovery’s AE-35 unit, the unit responsible for maintaining contact with...
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Chapter 22
...personal pressure suit and enters “Betty,” one of the ship’s three space pods. Assisted by Hal, Poole ejects from the ship. Though he’s completely untethered from Discovery, the risk of being...
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...space pod, then pushes off towards the original unit. Landing near the unit, he asks Hal to remotely control Betty to give him better light for his repair. Using the tools...
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Chapter 23
...Poole’s annoyance, the original AE-35 proves not to be faulty after all. Bowman suggests that Hal’s internal fault predictor could be incorrect, but Poole argues it is more likely that their...
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Chapter 24
Signaling a forthcoming announcement, Hal makes an electronic “throat-clearing” sound—an idiosyncratic but useful quirk. Hal tells Bowman the second AE-35...
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Dr. Simonson begins describing next steps, starting with disconnecting Hal, when suddenly the video message cuts off. Hal reports that the AE-35 unit has failed,...
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Chapter 25
Poole takes the space pod out to retrieve the AE-35 unit. Hal follows Poole’s commands, but deviates from his normal pattern of communication, and Bowman begins to...
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Chapter 26
...normally, Discovery continues toward Saturn. In a daze, Bowman finds himself staring at one of Hal’s fisheye lenses. Hal speaks up unprompted, saying it’s “too bad” about Frank, and asking if...
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Bowman threatens to disconnect Hal. Hal claims to have been suspicious of this, but advises against it, arguing that he...
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Chapter 27
Since Hal's inception, his existence has revolved around the fulfillment of his mission. From the outset of...
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Chapter 28
Bowman makes his way to the room containing Hal’s essential circuitry. Inside are the logic banks of his brain and—to Bowman’s surprise—one of Hal’s...
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Chapter 31
...political given the larger mystery at hand. Ultimately, however, he is more interested in understanding Hal’s behavior. According to Dr. Simonson, Hal’s psychosis was a product of his “unconscious guilt” resulting...
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